Bruce Bauman - Broken Sleep

In the midst of a second night of fast-tempo sleeplessness, Frau Lou appeared and raged, “Don’t you see that you and Nathaniel are reenacting your version of his parents’ lives? Stop it, now!”

Over forty-eight frenetic hours I painted two series of twenty-four 6-×-6 V-shaped boards numbered 1–12, and then set them down on the floor using each piece as a number in a diamond-shaped clock. I painted “i deny time” and “be beyond time,” “time kills in time” and “let’s fuck time.” I used Savant Red or Savant Blue for the backgrounds and white letters for A.M. hours and black letters for P.M. hours.

Finally finished, I collapsed on the cot in my studio. When my eyes opened, Somersby was kneeling beside me, his long eyelashes fluttering. “Nathaniel called. I raced over. He’s been trying to reach you for two days and—”

“He presumed I’d done something unhealthy.”

“Worried more than presumed. He’s just being cautious,” Somersby stroked my hair, knotted from dried sweat and paint, with his manicured fingernails.

“I need to wash up. I’m a mess.”

“An undeniably lovely mess.”

“Somersby, are you flirting with me?”

“I’d say more than flirting …”

Somersby turned out to be quite a bit more Scarlet Pimpernel than Scarlett O’Hara. We enjoyed a fun few days in my studio and his house, but never inside our house. Somersby assured Nathaniel that I was “doing just peachy,” and I avoided talking to him. Hours before Nathaniel’s return, we relaxed with an afternoon refreshment in the gazebo on Somersby’s back lawn. He asked, “So?”

“So nothing. Was fun. Over.”

He exhaled. Relieved. “I will talk to Nathaniel about my breach of honor,” his tone lugubrious.

“So noble of you. Men! You always act like triumphant cavemen when you ‘had’ another man’s woman. We fucked because I chose to do it. I decide if and when to tell Nathaniel.”

When Nathaniel arrived, exhausted from the seven-hour drive, I threw my arms around him with genuine affection.

He drank a beer while talking about how Alchemy had already started a band with Amanda, who later became Absurda Nightingale. He asked if Somersby had taken good care of me.

“Yes,” I said perfunctorily, although I could not look him in the eyes.

“How good?” He twitched and fidgeted as if he suspected something.

“Very good.”

“What does that mean? Exactly.” His right foot tapped uncontrollably against the floor.

“Polyamorously good.”

He slammed the bottle on the counter and his voice trembled. “You did this because you’re angry at me.”

“You think I planned it?”

“Not consciously. You’re too impulsive. But when you’re angry, sex is your weapon. You seduced him to hurt me.”

“No man gets seduced.”

“By you, any man or every man can be seduced.”

“Stop. I’m not going to see him again. Only I can’t live in this backwoods. I can’t. I have to move back to New York at least part time.”

“Do you want to leave me?”

“No! Do you want me to repent? To admit I feel guilty? You want me to say you have saved me? Ha. I saved you. But do I wish I could be monogamous for you? Maybe. If I could change that one thing in me — maybe — but then I wouldn’t be me. I’d be someone else and I don’t want to be anyone else and if I were, you wouldn’t have fallen in love with me.”

“Impeccable Salome logic.” To steady his trembling hands, he gripped the kitchen counter. Then he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with his palms and faced me again. I spoke first.

“You’ve hurt me, too.” I didn’t mean his Parisian fling — that didn’t hurt me deeply — but his belief that Somersby or anyone could replace him, that scalded to my core.

He reached for a tissue from the box on the counter and blew his nose.

“Nathaniel, do you hate me now?”

“Of course not.” He put on his glasses. “I don’t want you to be anyone but you. I want only you, and for you to have what you want.” He walked to my side and cupped my head in his hands and kissed my hair. “I’ll serve notice that we’re taking back the apartment after January first.”

Moses deplaned in Rio and took a taxi to a hotel in the Leblon section of the city. He ate dinner by himself at a churrascaria recommended by the concierge and spent the evening rehearsing his questions and the possible paths of the meeting.

In the morning, a hired car drove him to Alphaville, the walled and segregated wealthy community about fifteen miles from Rio. One thousand guards patrolled the city itself with its own parks, shops, and restaurants. At the north gate, the driver handed one of the guards a piece of paper with words written in Portuguese. “Please tell Malcolm Teumer that Moses is here.” Addressing the driver, the guard, dressed in militarystyle uniform, appeared to say something akin to “only preapproved visitors.” Moses stuck his head out the window and made an insistent dialing motion. “Call him.” After a brief phone conversation, the guard pointed, indicating they needed to pull to the side and wait. Moses leaned back. Breathed deep. Closed his eyes. Tried to visualize floating on a tranquil lake. The lake became a typhoon.

Ten minutes or so later, a scooter pulled up and parked beside the taxi. A muscle-bound young man in white pants and white short-sleeve shirt got off the scooter and motioned for Moses to step out of the car. He spoke to the driver in Portuguese. In broken English, the driver tried to explain something. Moses got the drift and allowed the man to pat him down and search the back of the car. He repressed a laugh at this ridiculousness — instead of enervating him, it relieved his tension.

Following the scooter, they passed garbage-free streets manicured lawns, immaculate parks, graffiti-free walls — practically a Hollywood movie set. They were a universe away from the simmering despair of the sunken shoulders of young women, the anger-clenched fists of street urchins, the stench of silent disease of the favelas, and equally distant from the multicolored explosions and the bikini-clad revelers of Ipanema dancing to the samba beat.

They pulled up to an off-yellow two-story stucco house. A woman in her early forties with neck-length wavy blond hair, hazel eyes, complexion as pale as his, stocky body dressed in jeans and flowery blouse greeted him at the doorway. She spoke in English with an accent lilted with the soft cadences of Brazilian Portuguese. “My father says you are the child of an old friend. I am sorry for the wait but João needed to come and show you the way.”

“Not a problem.”

“My father wanted to be properly prepared. He keeps to his Old World manners.”

Sure , Moses thought, Old World manners where you check your visitors for weapons .

“I wish you had given us prior notice so I could have prepared some food or drink.”

“It’s a business trip, so I didn’t know if I’d have time. Maybe if I come back again.”

“That would be lovely.”

He had imagined meeting his half siblings, but seeing his sister in the flesh still unnerved him. Sweat dampened the armpits and collar of his powder blue short-sleeve shirt. Born Jew or not, he still schvitzed .

“Please come in out of the heat.”

“Thanks.” He grimaced — she’d noticed. It wasn’t all that hot.

“My father suffers from emphysema. So the visit may be short. He’ll see you in his study.”

She led Moses down a hallway. Art hung on all the walls. In one room, he spotted a Salome diptych, a 48″ × 30″ Savant Red and Savant Blue painting. They arrived in a sparsely furnished, dimly lit study. A desk sat in front of a window covered by red silk curtains, and bookshelves lined every wall; no art in here. Two red upholstered chairs, along with a folded walker and an oxygen tank, were arranged around a circular wooden table. A half-smoked cigar dangled off the lip of a ceramic ashtray. Moses and his half sister stood beside one of the chairs as Malcolm moved unsteadily into the room, followed by João, who eased him into a chair and then left. Moses remained fixed in place, assessing his father. Not a Mephistophelean grin or strikingly sinister eyes, but a face fleshy with mottled skin, bald head, a roundish body covered by a nondescript black suit, white shirt, and black tie. The plainness of the man almost stunned Moses. Then he heard his father’s voice, a hiss that scalded like a white-hot branding iron meeting flesh. “Pleased to meet you. You bear little resemblance to your father or mother as I remember them.” Neither one made a move to shake the other’s hand. “Sit.”